Small Business Snapshot: Bumkins

By Jakki Liberman, founder and president of Bumkins November 17, 2016 08:53 am EST

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Credit: Nick Kulyniak / Bumkins

Our Small Business Snapshot series features photos that represent, in just one image, what the small businesses we feature are all about. Jakki Liberman, founder and president of Bumkins, explains how this image represents her business.

Bumkins creates fun and functional products that both children and parents will enjoy using over and over again, some even beyond the baby years. It's important that we produce sustainable and eco-friendly items and we love to hear when a well-loved product has been handed down from sibling to sibling. Our overall goal is to help simplify life for parents.

I started Bumkins in 1989 after having my third child and noticing her skin irritation from wearing disposable diapers. The cloth diaper options I found were not easy to use, so I worked to design a modern, user-friendly version, fastened with Velcro instead of pins, and featuring fun, colorful prints on the exterior. The waterproof fabric developed for the exterior was then used to create a line of award-winning bibs, bags and other products.

We create every product with the idea that even the little touches will be appreciated – our color palettes, our characters and designs, even the placement of our labels. Bumkins enters people's lives at a unique and exciting time, and we want parents and babies to enjoy the bright and fun details of our everyday products. I like to remain involved in every aspect of the business, as much now as when it was a small operation running out of my garage; I enjoy being hands-on, working with my team throughout the production process.

The consumer products market is constantly moving and changing, especially in the baby industry. One of our biggest challenges is staying relevant to consumers who are shopping for little ones that grow so quickly. While our bibs remain a tried and true staple of our catalog, we refresh our prints and licenses to stay on-trend and we bring in other items to compliment them.

Bumkins grew up in the '90s, through the technology boom that changed retail, the way we live, and the way we parent. We are moving faster with new items and trends, realizing our customer is not just within the US or North America but very global – and very much online. We are actively working with new partners to stay connected and involved with our customers and our community, carefully managing our growth to ensure we are here for the next generation of Bumkins babies.